Solve issue at other end of Delta

The planet Earth is in a cycle of warming temperatures, and we do not know how long or deep this cycle will be. Yet, some 35,000 square miles of the world's ice has disappeared since the cycle began. This is a faster melting rate than most scientists had predicted, based on past cycles and the additional warming caused by man-made greenhouse gas releases.

In the past 100 years, the water levels at the Golden Gate Bridge have risen 3 feet. If the warming cycle continues until all of the ice has melted, as it has in past eons, the water level at the Golden Gate will rise 23 feet.

Meanwhile, Southern and South Central California are badly in need of fresh water. Yet some 70 percent of the fresh water generated by rain and snow in Northern California now flows into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta system and out to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Golden Gate.

Extensive studies have been made and plans have been drawn to construct a very large twin pipeline to carry fresh water below and above ground from the Sacramento River to the Southern San Joaquin Valley, to be supplied to that area and pumped to Southern California.

Water currently being used in the Delta and transported to Southern and Central California by the State Water Project already has caused an increase of salt water into the Delta, changing the ecology yearly and taking farmland out of production.

The expenditure of $17 billion for the planned pipeline will undoubtedly go to $20 billion or more by the time it is built, but is not exorbitant in light of the benefit to Central and Southern California. However, it is really a pipe dream to believe that an improvement in the environment of fish, shell, animal and bird life will improve with the pipeline plan. The resultant salt water intrusion will create a completely new and drastically different ecology in the Delta.

The Central and Southern California water problem and the effects of global warming cannot be treated as separate problems -- their solutions require an integrated attack.

The rise in water levels caused by warming will most certainly cause at least a half-dozen poorly protected Delta islands to go permanently under water in the next 100 years. There is no political or collective private will strong enough to strengthen and maintain the Delta levees to the extent that would be required to save this productive farm land.

In the short run, loss of these islands will have a positive ecological effect. Fish, animal and bird life will flourish.

In the long run, loss of these islands is just a stepping stone to turning California's entire Central Valley into a very large inland lake, as waters rise and, one by one, the Delta islands disappear, along with millions of homes and thousands of square miles of valuable farm land.

As the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta becomes a lake or inland bay, many square miles of valuable low-lying areas at the edge of and on the northern and southern extremities of the San Francisco Bay will also become aquatic.

The $20 billion pipeline will have been a total waste. Central California will have all the water it needs at its doorstep, but that water will be so salty as to be useless for human consumption. Meanwhile, a new peripheral canal skirting the shores of the Delta will be required to supply drinking water to these cities.

We need to begin immediately to design and engineer shipping locks, fish ladders and fresh-water level control and wasting systems across the Golden Gate.

It is obvious that if 30 percent of the fresh water reaching the Delta today supports the population and farming of California today, then 100 percent of that water will support a population growth of three times our current level.

Properly planning, designing and engineering of a Golden Gate Locking System, to be built in stages to coincide with ocean level changes, will preclude building a white elephant.

The current State Water Project canal can be increased in size economically, to handle the requirements of Central and Southern California as they grow.

Current fish and wildlife habitat will be maintained and improved, as we continue to clean up discharges into the Delta system, improving the ecology of California for all time.

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The author is a native Californian who lives in the Delta, is a graduate engineer from the University of the Pacific, and is president of Environmental Developers Inc., the company that developed the VRAD system, the most environmentally pure and profitable municipal solid waste-to-energy process in the world today.